




















.^^^ 




^^•^^^ 



.,.** -icto:'. ** .*« ♦'^^\ V,.** /A%i^ 







Sp-^f 



. . .V 








V..** .♦ 



^^/ 



^ 



THE 



SLAA^E'S APPEAL. 



E. CADY STANTON. 

PUBLISnED AT THE 

ANTI-SLAVERY LEPOSITOEY, 

15 STEUBEN STREET. 

ALBANY. 7 



ALBANY : 
WEED, PARSONS AND COMPANY, PRINTERS- 

1860. 



o 



EH 

O 

l-H 

o 





^ 




CO 

l-< 




'bn 


c« S 


« 




<D 






, 


1^ 


m'^ 


OJ 


H 


a> 


2^ 


^ 


E-i 
<1 
Eh 

m 


o 

a 


-S 3 

O ^'- 
t» bo 




H 


V.^ 


1« 


P5 


a 


2l 


2 


n 


a> 


m 'I' 


^ 


Pk 


'1 


CD "l^ 


aj 


^ 


cs 


rgcb 


,Q 



<!' -a x; j2 



H) 



5 c3 7^ O 



O) 



a <c Qj 

O «« G 3 




Ol O) 



rt cS 






Oi _ 

<U J3 re I 

": ^ :s ^-^ 
^ "-^ « 

. (U ._- cS 

-^ c 15 o 

«*- -u t- 3 

O cs ii M 

«6 « o 
2 fcD 

O OJ o 

C C3 ^ 

fc- o >- 
O «J t- 

« S to 

^ (u ^ ri^ -^ ■:: 
-aw « 2-5 

O 1^ ff -^ 



8^ 



3J CO 



52 « 

o m 






e5 



>-5 a 



^5« 



^ THE SLAVE'S APPEAL. 

U 

0^ BT E. CaDY STANTOIf. 

Mek and Women op New York: 

From the tobacco fields, the rice swamps, the cotton 
and sugar plantations and the orange groves of your 
southern states, we have, for near a century, sent up 
one long, agonizing cry for help. With eyes and ears 
and souls expectant, Ave have stood on tiptoe to catch 
from northern breezes the first sound of hope. Cold 
winds from New York's harbor have sometimes roused 
our sluggish natures, and waked us up to thought. Oft 
have we watched the coming of each Avhitening sail on 
sea and rivei-, with vague hopes of some relief, but by 
the receding Avave to be o'erwhelmed afresh in blank 
despair. We know, beyond the bounds our eyes can 
penetrate, there is a land Avhere man is free, and above 
the clouds a beacon-light to point the way. Feeling 
that God is just and good and true, in simple faith, 
long have Ave Avaited, with hope and prayer, and con- 
viction strong as death, that his almighty arm, sooner 
or later, Avould strike the bloAV for the millions of im- 
mortal souls shrouded in the thick darkness of ignor 
ance and slavery. 

Men and Avomen of New York, the God of thunder 
speaks through you. He bids you once more proclaim 
the laAV, given to his chosen people on Sinai's mount, 
mid clouds of dazzling brightness. He bids you dig 
up those mighty tables of stone from beneath the rub- 
bish of ages — from forms and ceremonies, creeds and 
commentaries, constitutions, canons, codes and statute 
laws — and hold them up before all Republicans and the 
sun, that the Ten Living Commandments of the great 
" I Am " may be daguerreotyped on the hearts of this 
guilty people. Command your priests at the altar to 



read the Decalogue with a new and holy unction ; to 
make a higher, broader, deeper application than in their^ 
ignorance and falsehood, they have thought or dared 
to do. 

" Thou shalt have no other gods before me." Love 
justice, speak the truth, do the right ever and always, 
though like the martyr John Brown — the slave's 
Christ — you give yourself a living sacrifice. Bow 
down neither to cotton or gold ; to union, constitution 
or law ; to false judges or fawning priests ; but in thy 
brother man behold thy God. 

" Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God 
in vain." When those who claim to be the servants 
of the living God, go up to you from our land of bond- 
age — from the midst of violence, and robbery and 
wrong — proclaim them the base hypocrites, the whited 
sepulchres, the canting pharisees, the blasphemous pre- 
tenders they really are ; who, with the name of God 
upon their lips, crucify him afresh each hour 4 who 
baptize the sins and iniquities of the people as ordi- 
nances of God, and while, with consecrated hands, in 
the name of the " Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost," 
the sign of redemption is set on the infant brow, per- 
chance in that very hour, the child just born into the 
kingdom of Christ is Aveighed in the balance and sold 
by the pound to the highest bidder, and the price 
thereof paid to the board of missions in the city of 
New York, to carry the light of the gospel to the 
nations that sit in darkness ! 

"Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy." 
What day, Avhat time, what work is holy, Avith a na- 
tion that has no fear of God before its eyes ? 

" Bring no more vain oblations ; incense is an abomination 
*' unto me ; the new moons and sabbaths, the calling of assem- 
" blies, I cannot away with ; it is iniquity, even the solemn 
" meeting. Your new moons and appointed feasts my soul 
" hateth : they are a trouble unto me ; I am weary to bear 
" them. And when ye spread your hands, I will hide mine 
" eyes from you ; yea, Avhen ye make many prayers, I will 
" not hear ; your Lands are full of blood. Wash you, make 



" you clean ; put awaythe evil of your doings from before mine 
"eyes; cease to do evil ; learn to do well ; seek judgment, re- 
" lievethe oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow." 

" Honor thy father and thy mother." How can the 
beautiful daughter of a southern master, honor the 
father who with cold indifference could expose her on 
the auction block to the coarse gaze of licentious bid- 
ders ; or the ignoble slave mother, who could consent 
to curse her with such a life of agony and shame ? Or, 
do you tell us, Sinai's thunders were never meant for 
Afric's ears ? 

"Thou shalt not kill." Go to, now, take God's 
image, put out its eyes, cut off its ears, knock out 
its teeth, burn, and brand, and scarify, and catmaul its 
flesh ! hang it on trees, or head dowuAvards in deep 
pits, choke'it in stocks, hunt it with pikes and guns, 
and bows, and hounds ! Make it a target for all 
your cruel jests, your spite, your spleen ! use all your 
hellish arts to blot out, if you can, the faintest vestige 
of immortality ; then, in white robes, from God's 
altar, on each returning Sabbath day, with holy unc- 
tion, read to the kneeling saints ! ! " Thou shalt not 

kill." 

" Thou shalt not commit adultery." The trembling 
girl for Avhom thou didst pay a price but yesterday in a 
New Orleans market, is not thy lawful wife. ^ Foul 
and damning, both to the master and the slave, is this 
wholesale violation of the immutable laws of God. 

" Thou shalt not steal." Not even a black man, six 
feet high and well proportioned, found on the banks of 
the Niger, idly and ignorantly wastmg the whole sum 
of his existence: not even though the slaver be fitted 
out under the very shadow and sanction of the diocese 
of Bishop Potter of New York. 

We ask the ten thousand priests who minister at 
your altars, to speak God's truth — and speak it loud 
enough for us to hear, that our glad hearts may echo 
back'each word to heaven. Go tell your sherifls, mar- 
shals, legislators, judges, courts, that in the resurrec- 



6 

tion of the Decalogue there is a new offense to be re- 
corded in your civil code. At every bar of justice in 
the Empire State, proclaim the law, " that he who steals 
a man shall surely die." That m all yoiir broad, rich 
acres, there is no sjiot on which a slave can breathe. 

Go tell Ontario's waters, they need no longer scorn 
to wash your shores, for freedom has built her temples 
there ; no longer bear the sad complainings of the ex- 
iled African to royal ears to find redress, for you have 
vouchsafed to us peace and protection in all your val- 
leys, plains and forests, on the hilltoi:)S and green banks 
of all your inland lakes and rivers, and on the outposts 
of your vast domain ; and the four millions jubilees 
that will simultaneously burst forth in thanks to heaven 
would drown, for once, your great Niagara's roar. 

Until New York can do all this, let her not claim 
that she is free. On the soul of every man, and woman 
and child, rests the guilt of this Bastile of horrors, so 
long as they are not pledged with all their power and 
influence to pull it down. 

Your Republican party, claiming to be for freedom, 
is now triumphant. Its victories come booming down 
to us on every breeze. Your greatest statesman has 
said: 

"That by no word, no act, no combination into which I 
" might enter, should any one human being, of all the gene- 
" rations to which I belong, much less any class of human 
" beings of any nation, race or kindred, be oppressed and kept 
" down in the least degree in their efforts to rise to a higher 
'* state of liberty and happiness. Amid all the glosses of the 
" times, amid all the essaji's and discussions to which the con- 
" Btitution of the United States has been subjected, this has 
" been the simple, plain, broad light in which I have read 
" every article and every section of that great instrument. 
" Whenever it requires of me that this hand shall keep down 
" the humblest of the human race, then I will lay down 
" power, place, position, fame, everything, rather than adopt 
" such a construction of such a rule. If, therefore, in this 
" land there are any who would rise, I say to them, in God'a 
" name, Good speed !" 



Republicans, follow your leader, and make New 
York sacred to freedom, that when the panting fugi- 
tive shall touch your soil, his chains must fall forever. 
Give to his exiled countrymen all the rights, privileges 
and immunities of citizenship, and shut your harbor 
against the barbarous and Heaven-defying commerce of 
man in man. 

In these demands, we ask no more than you have 
freely given to the oppressed of other lands. The he- 
roes of Hungary and Poland, of Greece and Italy, have 
ever had your admiration, your protection and your aid. 
Is Garibaldi, the hero of this hour, more brave than he 
who takes the high resolve, alone, to face a nation ; to 
fight his battles by night with reptiles, beasts and 
hounds, through swamp, and wood, and river ; and all 
day long to flee before the wrath of man, his footprints 
traced in blood, ofttimes on frozen plains and ice- 
bound waters ; no martial music, fame or glory, or 
hope of high renown, to buoy up his soul ; friendless, 
homeless, naked, starving, beset with foes on every 
side ? Who can count all our brave countrymen, who, 
for the love of freedom, have, one by one, trod all those 
weary miles from the everglades of Florida, guided, 
perchance, by the spirits of the Revolution through 
Camden, Yorktown, Brandywine, Monmouth, West 
Point, Bemis' Heights and Ticonderoga, with no higher 
hope, in escaping from the talons of your Eagle of con- 
quest, than to lie down by the Royal Lion, and die in 
peace under the free shadow of a Monarch's Throne ? 



[Advektisement.] 

BOOKS FOR THE TIMES 



A Depository for Anti-Slavery and kindred publications has 
been opened in Albany, at 15 Steuben street, a few steps fixm ihg 
Delavan House. Among the works kept on sale, at the Depo- 
sitory, are : The Speeches and Writings of W. Lloyd Garkison. 
The Sermons, Lectures and Speeclies of Theodore Parker. 
Congressional Speeches and other Discourses by Gerrit Smith. 
Sermons, Lectures and Essays of Rev. Geo. B. Cheevek, D. D. 
Travels in Texas, and in the Slave States, by Feed. Law Olm- 
sted. The Impending Crisis, oi-iginal work and comi3endium, 
by 11. E. Helper. The Life of Cajit. John Brown, and other 
works, by Redpath. The Memoirs and Sermons of Rev. Dr. 
Changing. Isaac T. Hopper, a True Life, by Lydia Maria 
Child. 

Also, the Speeches and Writings of Horace Greeley, Alvan 
Stewart, Lysander Sjjooner, John G. Whittier, Gurowski, Wen- 
dell Phillips, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Frederick Douglass, Wil- 
liam Goodell, Geo. M. Stroud, C. C. Burleigh, W. H. Burleigh, 
Lydia Maria Child, A. D. Mayo, Harriet Beecher Stowe, James 
Russell Lowell, Henry Ward Beecher, John Quincy Adams, W. 
H. Seward, Charles Sumner, Joshua R. Giddings, Cassius M. 
Clay, William Jay, Samuel J. May, W. H. Furness, Lovejoys, 
Beriah Green, E. H. Chapin, Geo. W. Curtis, &c. 

These works, with many others, will be sold at the publishers' 
lowest prices. 

There will also be kept, for gratuitous distribution, a great 
variety of Pamphlets and Tracts on Slavery, Temperance, 
Woman's Rights, &c., &c. 

1^^ Donations are solicited to aid in printing and circulating 
Petitions, Tracts, &c. 

Subscriptions will be received for the Anti-Slavery Standard, 
The Liberator, The Herald of Progress, and other liberal news- 
papers. 

A good supply of Stationery will also be kept for sale at the 
Depository. 

Friends of the Cause and the public generally are invited to 
call. 

LYDIA MOTT, Jlgent. 

Albany, November, 1860. 



liiiiiiiiiiiiPiiiiiii 





